DENVER – The court battle between Taylor Swift and a former Denver country radio host accused of grabbing her buttocks during a meet-and-greet ahead of a June 2013 concert in Denver is heating up a month ahead of the trial.
Swift will appear in person in U.S. District Court of Colorado for the trial, which is set to begin Aug. 7 and scheduled for nine days. A final pre-trial preparation conference is set for July 21.
The world-famous musician has been embroiled in lawsuits and counter-suits for several years with David Mueller, a former radio personality from KYGO, a Denver country radio station.
Mueller was fired from his job days after a member of Swift’s security team claimed that Mueller had grabbed her buttocks underneath her skirt while taking a photo together ahead of a concert at the Pepsi Center.
He sued Swift and some members of her team in September 2015, claiming they slandered him and forced his firing without cause, though the radio station said it did its own internal investigation before firing Mueller.
And Swift filed a counterclaim months later calling Mueller’s claims that it was a different KYGO employee who actually touched Swift’s buttocks “specious” and called for a jury trial to settle the back-and-forth allegations.
At the end of May, Judge William J. Martinez issued a summary judgment denying Mueller’s tort claims that Swift and her team had slandered him, but upheld the rest of both suits.
Swift and handfuls of witnesses have been deposed in the case, and there are hundreds of pages of testimony, documents and photos that have been submitted as evidence.
Her attorneys have argued in documents filed in the past two weeks that Mueller purposely spoiled evidence relating to the case several times, including recordings he made with his bosses that fired him.
They also argue that a photo of the two together proves that Mueller indeed grabbed her, but the photo is sealed in evidence records.
Swift has said in the past that if the court finds in her favor, she’d donate any money to charities aimed at protecting women from sexual assault.
The trial is set to begin at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 7.
